Monthly Archives: November 2011

Copywriters are some of the most creative marketers you’ll meet, but they’re also the most tortured. Theirs is a life of one-off projects, grammar checking, and constant re-writes. They are doomed to try articulating the miming hand gestures and vague ideas of their clients. The last thing these folks need to be told is that they’re leaving money on the table. But if they’re not integrating inbound marketing elements into their projects, they’re doing just that.

By baking inbound tactics into their proposals, copywriters can position themselves to increase their average project size and, given the ongoing effort required for inbound marketing, increase their number of retainer clients. And because content creation is the sweet spot of copywriting, as well as one of inbound marketing’s four core services, agencies with this skill set can easily embrace the methodology without going too far beyond what they do best.

Here are five strategic steps copywriters and copywriting agencies can follow to leverage inbound’s proven strategy for better success.

1. Leverage Domain Knowledge

If you’ve been researching industry language in order to nail a product or service page description, put the knowledge you’ve gathered to work by pitching the idea of a blog to your client. Written in the customers’ language, blogs help create the need for your clients’ products and services. Communicate to your clients that websites with active blogs generate more traffic and leads than those that don’t, and that you can easily be the point-person for this effort. 

2. Give Your Best Content Growth Hormones

Blog for a month or so, and then measure which posts performed the best. Bubble those posts up into an uber-topic, and get your client to commit resources for writing a more extensive and premium piece of content around that subject, like an ebook or a whitepaper. Give this the loving touch of a copywriter by dressing it up with a genius title, illustrative pictures, compelling charts, and witty headlines.

3. Unleash Your Premium Content

Build a landing page for your ebook or whitepaper to live behind, so that a website visitor has to exchange their contact information in order to download. Then place links to that landing page within and at the end of your blog posts. Make it your goal to have that link “complete your reader’s thought,” meaning if they read something high-level on your blog, the ebook or whitepaper is an opportunity for them to really dig in.

4. Make a Goal-Line Handoff From Sales to Marketing

By linking to those landing pages, you have built real lead generation potential into every blog article you post. Continue by building the potential for real customers by listing out the specialties of your client’s salespeople, and matching each rep to a landing page. Doing so will ensure that the name and email address of every lead generated gets funneled to that rep with the best chance of closing the business.

5. Rinse & Repeat

Get in the habit of measuring everything. It will allow you to build on successes you’re having, report on content that might be falling flat, advocate for increase project scope, or earn a retainer deal from your client.

In what other ways can copywriting agencies leverage inbound marketing methodologies to attract more business?

Image Credit: Maewe

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Last month, Google Co-Founder Larry Page noted that Google+ had amassed over 40 million users since its launch just 4 months prior. That’s a lot of growth! Then again, Google Buzz had 9 million posts within 56 hours of its release…and we all know what happened to Google Buzz.

At this point, we’re all keeping a close eye on Google+’s growth, wishing we had a crystal ball. Will it be another flop? Or will it take off, catch up to, and surpass the existing social networks like Facebook? Now that Google+ has business pages, it’s even more important for marketers to pay attention. If you’re still on the fence about whether or not your business will benefit from having a Google+ page, here is an interesting timeline of events and growth to consider:

This timeline of events illustrates some impressive growth. But if you take a step back, it’s apparent that Google+ still has a lot of catching up to do if it’s going to compete with Twitter or Facebook. Even at its peak, with all of the hype of the public launch, Google+’s 15 million visits accounted for less than 1% of social network traffic. Twitter attracted more than double the traffic in that time, and Facebook attracted over 100 times the traffic, with 1.76 billion visits.

In terms of membership, Google+’s community of 40 million is already almost one third of LinkedIn’s 135 million users. That’s impressive considering LinkedIn was launched back in May 2003. Facebook currently has over 800 million members, but back in April 2009 – over 2.5 years after it was expanded to everyone (not just schools) — it had grown to 200 million users. Google+ already has 20% of that total, thanks to Google’s other successful offerings.

Marketing Takeaway

This data is interesting, but what does it all mean for your business’ marketing strategy? Should you take the time to create and maintain your own Google+ business page? The answer is “Yes!” Based on the data points we’ve seen so far, Google+ looks promising right out of the gate. Even if Google+ turns out to fizzle, you don’t want to risk getting left in the dust. We all know Google is a search engine giant, and it’s likely there will be more benefits down the road (like valuable insights about your Circles). Already, there are SEO benefits to having a Google+ business page. So what are you waiting for?

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Visualized content is popping up all over the web lately, and it’s no surprise. Visual content is pleasing to the eye, stimulating, entertaining, and much more interesting than plain old text. Haven’t you noticed how much more frequently infographics seem to be making their way onto blogs and websites lately? There’s a very reasonable explanation: people love visual content.

But does every piece of visual content you produce have to be as complex as a full-blown infographic? No way. And does every piece of visual content even have to highlight data? Negative. Sometimes the concept you’re trying to explain just lends itself to a more visual representation, and these types of portrayals can often make the concept much easier to follow and understand by your audience. And the benefits of visual content are huge — because it tends to be much more shareable and interesting, visual content often gets spread more virally, allowing you to extend the reach and effectiveness of your content.

There are many ways you can make your content more visually appealing and effective. Some are simple, and some are more complex. Either way, visualized content is hot. Here are some awesome examples of content visualization to motivate you to start thinking more with your eyes.

1. Restaurant Social Media & Word of Mouth by Spork Media

2. The Journey of a Tweet by Next Generation Online

3. Social Media Strategy Transit Map by Intersection Consulting

4. Real Estate Website Linking Matrix by Brad Carroll

5. Functions of the Brain by 50 Watts

6. Completed Transactions by Industry by SecondMarket

7. Strategic Defaults on Upside-Down Homes (Men vs. Women) by Trulia & RealtyTrac

8. SEO Speed Chart by Bruce Clay

9. The Six G’s of Social Media Marketing by Nonprofit Marketing Guide

10. Customer Service Is the New Marketing by Intersection Consulting

11. Can’t Pay the Mortgage? by Trulia & RealtyTrac

12. Demand by Industry by SecondMarket

13. Traditional Societal “Push” Model by Zachary Jean Paradis

14. 10 Levels of Intimacy in Today’s Communication by Emilie Ogez

15. Social Media Brand Influence by Eyeflow Internet Marketing

16. SEO Process by Parampaul Madra

17. Tablet Data by HubSpot

What do you think of these content visualization examples? Have they inspired you to start experimenting with visual content on your website, blog, and in social media?

Image Credit: Mikleman

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It looks like the marketer’s cry for more data has reached YouTube’s ears, and not too long after Facebook beefed up its analytics with new features for Facebook Insights.

While YouTube had previously offered an Insights tool that let you view data for videos on your channel, the Google-owned online video giant announced on its blog this morning that, over the course of today, it will be replacing your YouTube Insights with YouTube Analytics. Here are the four latest features YouTube Analytics will tack on to the almost-defunked Insights.

New Dashboard Overview

When you visit youtube.com/analytics, you’ll be greeted with a page that provides all your important data in one screenshot. You’ll still be able to see a summary of your views, videos demographics, and popularity by region (though it looks much prettier!), but now your dashboard will also display overall channel performance, engagement, and how people find and view your videos. You can click into each report to see more detailed information, which brings us to the next awesome YouTube Analytics update.

More Detailed Reports

YouTube Analytics will offer more detailed statistics than Insights that are intended to give a more precise understanding of your audience and how well your content performs. Right from the overview page, you can access several reports from the left navigation. You also now have a data filter that lets you filter by content, geography, and custom date ranges.

Charts can display with data points in daily, weekly, or monthly increments, and it also lets you compare two metrics on one chart. You can even toggle between the Line Chart view and Map view on most reports. If your report has map functionality, you can hover over countries to see more detailed data for that area.

Once you run a report, download it…and show it to your boss to show what an analytical marketing superstar you are!

Audience Retention

Formerly called Hot Spots, this report will show you how far viewers watch through your video. This will be relevant for older videos with 600 views or more, or newer videos with 300 views or more, as YouTube has set these as the minimum number needed for statistical significance.

YouTube measures your ability to retain your audience based on both absolute and relative retention. Absolute audience retention shows the views of every moment of the video as a percentage of the number of views at the beginning of the video. So if someone rewinds and re-watches your video, you’ll see your graph go up; if someone starts to fast forward, your graph will go down. Relative audience retention shows your video’s ability to retain viewers during playback relative to all YouTube videos of similar length. The higher the graph at any moment, the more viewers kept watching your video over other videos at that same moment in playback.

What all this fancy math allows you to do is see where in your video people get bored. YouTube has even made it possible to embed your video in the report so you can align the peaks and valleys in the report with the moments in the video people are most engaged, and least engaged, so you can adjust your content to capitalize on what people seem to enjoy.

Estimated Earnings

Some marketers are trying to monetize their YouTube presence. If that’s you, you’ll enjoy the Estimated Earnings tab of YouTube Analytics. Total Estimated Earnings tells you the net revenue from Google-sold advertising, AFV Earnings provides the estimated earnings from auction sold advertising via AdSense for Video, and YouTube Earnings shows the estimated earnings from Doubleclick advertising and any other YouTube-sold sources.

Why Marketers Should Measure Video Performance

If you didn’t spend much time in Insights, take these positive changes as an opportunity to reengage with your video marketing analytics. While video content is highly coveted by consumers, it is far more costly to produce than web content, in terms of both time and money. What goals do you have with your video marketing? Whether it’s driving engagement, ad revenue, subscribers, or a whole mix of metrics, having access to daily insights and reporting into your wins and losses will give you the data you need to make educated decisions about your video marketing investment.

The changes to YouTube account holders will roll out throughout the day, so if you haven’t noticed a change yet, hold steady. YouTube Analytics was launched to help marketers extend their reach and, straight out of YouTube’s mouth, “earn more money.” I’m sure we all hope these changes deliver on that!

Have you seen your Insights account replaced by YouTube Analytics? What do you think of the new features?

Image credit: Rego – d4u.hu

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The following is a guest post by Mike Troiano. Mike is a former New York ad man turned venture-funded entrepreneur, now a Principal at Boston-based Holland-Mark.  You can follow him on Twitter at @miketrap, and connect with him elsewhere through About Me.

Product, product, product. More focus on product was at the center of Brad Feld’s comments at last week’s Silicon Valley Bank CEO event, in response to a question about what he’d do differently if he had it to do over. More focus on product is at the core of the Lean Startup Revolution we’re all getting behind, and in the spine of the Steve Jobs bio we’re all reading, and in the frequent posts of the startup bloggers we all pay attention to.

And it’s all true. Product is the key, at the very center of building a viable business from nothing. And by implication, marketing is so 15 minutes ago. Marketing is for products unworthy of passionate advocacy, a crutch for nice-to-have startups who invest in sprawling web sites and launch parties like losers with no choice but to pay for sex.

I spend a lot of time fighting this perception, talking about the difference between the kind of strategic marketing that can corrupt your vision with the external reality, marketing communications, which consists largely of the promotional sham-ware of the mid-twentieth century.

But you know what? I’m giving all that up. I’m going to take another approach, one I think will resonate more clearly with the Cult of Product sub-culture which seems to be sucking all of the oxygen out of the shill-o-sphere.

Ready? Here it is: You should focus on the desired response to your product, not just on the product itself.

Why must you focus so intently on your product? Isn’t it because you want people to respond to your product in ways that propel your businesses to greatness? Isn’t your product, then, a means to an end? Isn’t it a stimulus hoping to evoke the right response on the part of the customers who buy it?

In a very real way, I’d argue yes. More than that, I’d argue that the primary dimension of product response that propels businesses to greatness is emotional response.

What do great un-advertised, Billion-dollar brands like Dropbox, Facebook, and even (until recently) Google have in common? We love them. They make us feel respectively Liberated, Connected, and Empowered in ways that enrich our lives. They make us grateful, make us want to share with others. A brand is nothing more than an emotional response out there in the world, but building brands with products instead of print advertising doesn’t make them any less important, or any less worthy of early focus, thoughtful strategy, and effective execution.

It’s becoming a cliche to say your product is your marketing, in an era where customers trust each other more than they do media. Well if that’s true it might be time to bring a little more marketing into your product, in the form of treating the softer science of brand development with the same respect you give the harder sciences of product management and engineering.

What do you think?  Where do you stand on the Cult of Product? Would love to read your comments.

Looking for other startup fanatics?  Request access to the OnStartups LinkedIn Group.  130,000+ members and growing daily.

Oh, and by the way, you should follow me on twitter: @dharmesh.

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Driving traffic to your site is all well and good, but how do you turn that traffic into customers? To make your growing web traffic worth something (ahem, money?), the first step is to convert those visitors into leads, and landing pages are an efficient, low cost way to get that done.

But if you’re noticing that some of your landing pages perform better than others, there are some logical explanations behind your underperformers. Let’s take a look at the 5 most common reasons your site visitors click through to your landing page and then abandon it in a flash.

5 Reasonable Explanations for Landing Page Abandonment

1.) Your landing page didn’t pass the blink test. The blink test refers to the first three seconds a visitor spends on any page of your website during which they orient themselves and glean what they can do on that page. The user clicked to your landing page with a vague idea of what they might find there, but in the first three seconds, it is your duty to make it abundantly clear what they will find on that page. You can do so by crafting a clear headline, call-to-action, and providing a form above the fold.

2.) Your landing page had too many distractions. If you only have three seconds to orient a new visitor, you need to let them focus! Remove all visual distractions such as Flash or animation, a navigation that lets them click away, and large and intimidating blocks of text. Instead, include a pleasant (but reasonably sized) image that is relevant to your offer, and make use of all those wonderful formatting tools like bullets, numbers, and bolded headlines to break up text.

3.) You didn’t use actionable language. It’s not that your readers aren’t smart; just don’t make them think too hard while they’re on your landing page. Tell them exactly what to do by using verbs and explanatory language in your headlines and on your ‘submit’ button. Let’s do a little compare and contrast. Which headline do you think will result in more conversions on a landing page?

Your How-To Guide

vs.

Download Your How-To Guide About Creating Content for the Holidays

If you guessed the second one, you’re right on the money! It tells visitors explicitly what they should do on the landing page, and what they’ll receive for doing it. Just be sure to explain the value of your offer with some brief copy after you write your awesomely actionable headline.

4.) Your form just wasn’t worth the work. There’s a delicate balance to strike between gathering enough qualifying information about your leads, and losing leads to excessively long forms. If you’re not sure how many form fields are too many, start small and build up. Through the magic of A/B testing, you’ll be able to find your sweet spot where neither leads nor information is compromised.

5.) Your offer didn’t match your call-to-action (CTA). If your call-to-action was enticing enough to get a visitor to click through to your landing page, make sure what you actually offer aligns with the original CTA. You can prevent visitor disappointment by being as specific as possible with your call-to-action. If you’re offering a how-to guide, mention what it’s about in both the call-to-action and on the landing page. Use the same language so continuity is maintained throughout the conversion process.

If you’re experiencing dismal conversion rates on your landing pages, do a quick check for these five common problems. Once all of your landing pages are in line with these best practices, you can fine-tune and A/B detailed aspects of your page like button color or page layout to get the best possible conversion rate from each landing page you produce.

Have you seen a lift in conversion rates from solving for landing page abandonment? What was your most common landing page offense?

Image credit: Post-Software

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Video content can be a valuable asset in your inbound marketing content mix. In fact, by 2013, 90% of internet traffic is expected to be video. But getting people to sit through your videos can be challenging, considering 33% of viewers say “no thank you” and move on after watching just 30 seconds. 44% lose interest and leave at the 1-minute mark, and 60% bail on your video after 2 minutes.

Your video is being judged on its content, presentation, production quality, style, and the valuable information it provides. What this tells us is that your content must be truly remarkable to maintain your audience’s attention. Here are the 12 tips to instantly improve the production quality of your video marketing content to give it a nice little boost.

Pre-Production

Be well prepared and organized for your video shoots. If you show up to your shoot unorganized and decide to “wing it,” your final product will look unprofessional and sloppy. On the other hand, if you’re prepared, you’ll be able to focus your efforts on directing your actors rather than figuring out last-minute logistics. Time is of the essence, so don’t waste hours trying to figure out which angle you want or what line needs to be delivered next. Know exactly what you want before the day you film. 

Top Pre-Production Tips:

1. Be original. The idea/concept for your video project should be original and creative. Don’t take the easy route and copy someone else’s idea.

2. Plan it out. Be organized and plan everything out in great detail during the pre-production phase. Write a script, draw out a storyboard, and create a shot list.

3. Be selective when choosing video subjects. Set high standards when casting actors and actresses for your projects. The lines being delivered should not be forced. Pick someone who can deliver dialogue naturally.

4. Carefully consider the set. Don’t try to fool your audience by “set dressing” your office to simulate another location. Your audience is paying close attention to every detail of your video. Shoot your video projects in locations other than your office if the setting of your video isn’t an office.

Production

Aim to make your footage as close to perfect as possible. You can always touch up your footage when you edit afterwards, but remember that editing takes time. If you can make everything look as close to perfect during production, you will save yourself a lot of valuable time in post-production. If you shoot a scene and it doesn’t come out great, learn from what went wrong the first time, and shoot it again.

Top Production Tips:

5. Be cognizant of sound quality. Don’t come off as an amateur with poor sound recording quality. Use lapel/lavaliere mics when shooting sit-down interviews.

6. Set up lights. You don’t want your footage to be under or over exposed, so set up lights and eliminate any unwanted shadows.

7. Use a tripod. Make sure the tripod is level.

8. Focus. Make sure the camera is in focus and white balanced.

9. Obey the ‘rule of thirds.’ Always obey the rule of thirds when framing your shots. Your subject’s eye-line should be on the top horizontal line leaving an empty space on the screen in the direction where the subject’s eyes are aiming (in this case, to the left of the screen). The subject’s mouth should be on the bottom horizontal line.  Try not to position your subject in the middle of the screen. There should be a small amount of room between the top of the screen and the top of the subject’s head.

Post-Production/Editing

Make sure your content is remarkable and tailored to your target audience. Edit your video down so it gets to the point and doesn’t drag on. You have 8 seconds to capture your viewer’s attention. Make sure that the video is engaging, informative, relevant to the viewer, and that the viewer will clearly understand the message.

Top Post-Production Tips:

10. Align the flow of the video with the emotional response you want to evoke in viewers. The tone, structure, and pacing of your video has a major influence on its effectiveness and the emotional impact on your audience.

11. Leverage b-roll. Cover up your cuts with b-roll footage that complements the narration.

12. Optimize video text. Keep the style of your text and titles simple, classy, and sharp.

Are you leveraging video as a part of your content mix? What other tips can you share to improve overall video production quality?

Image Credit: woodleywonderworks

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